Superintendent's Blog

June 16, 2021

BPS Literacy Plan Update

Tricia Clifford, Ed.D., Assistant Superintendent of Schools

What a year!  So much has happened in each of our four schools in Bedford, and with each new change, or transition, staff/faculty, parents and students have all been flexible and have done their best to focus on teaching and learning.  I’ve written about the Bedford Public Schools Literacy Plan in the past on this blog, and it’s been discussed at school committee meetings, and within each of the faculty meetings at the schools.  The BPS Literacy Plan was a joint effort among educators throughout the district in the spring of 2020.  It was implemented in the fall of 2020, and now at the end of the 2020-2021 school year, I can provide an update on where we are with the five goals, and the action steps outlined under each of the goals.

Just to review, there are five goals within the Literacy Plan.  Also, there is a Literacy Committee, with membership from each of the schools that meets with me every six weeks.  The purpose of this committee and the bi-monthly meetings, is to check in on where we are with the progress of the action steps, and to also listen, support and problem solve as a committee, all things literacy related.  The five goals that make up the Literacy Plan are as follows:

Goal 1:  Vision/Leadership/Communication

Goal 2:  Assessment

Goal 3:  Intervention Process

Goal 4:  Core curriculum and Instruction

Goal 5:  Professional Development/Coaching

As I stated, each of the goals has a number of action steps outlined that address the goal.  Each of the action steps is generally labeled with being addressed/completed during year 1, 2, or 3 of the plan’s lifespan.  Some of the goals are to be implemented during all three years, while many of them are outlined specifically to be completed in year 1 or 2, etc.  As I reviewed my notes before beginning to write this update, I was impressed with how many of the action steps that were outlined for year 1 of the plan were completed, and how many action steps outlined for year 2 were also completed-during a pandemic, during hybrid learning...kudos to the faculty/staff, students, and families!

Goal 1:  Vision/Leadership/Communication.  An important action step under this goal was to make sure that the Literacy Plan was embedded in School Improvement Plans throughout the district.  This yielded action steps being embedded in what each school did this year, which added consistency and importance to the plan.  We also were able to make sure that funding for programs, including Units of Study for Reading and Writing were supported.  That Fundations (phonics instruction) training will take place, and be implemented with fidelity at the elementary level.  Also that, Orton Gillingham, which is a specialized way to teach reading was provided and that special needs teachers were trained in this approach.  We also have leveraged the expertise of our Literacy Specialists by creating schedules at the elementary level that allow them to work as interventionists at all grade levels, focusing on tiered intervention for students in relation to reading and writing needs. We are also participating in a specially designed workshop for teachers on  “Differentiation” at the end of June from Research for Better Teaching.  This training will help teachers plan and implement lessons and classroom structures that address the different learning needs, and instructional practices that students will need returning from a year of learning during the pandemic.  

Goal 2:  Assessment, We’ve implemented the Data Wise process for the second year.  During the first year of implementing the Data Wise process (as I’ve outlined in this blog previously) the curriculum and administrative leadership group learned about how to use data to inform instruction.  This past year, the actual work of implementing assessments in reading, writing, math, and science was utilized in what we call “assessment sweeps”, where students take assessments, and then we have data meetings where we discuss and analyze the data-and then implement interventions to address student needs.  This process happens regularly at least twice a year, and in some cases three times a year.  

Goal 3:  Intervention Processes.  Within this goal we’ve really been able to examine the RtI (Response to Intervention) structure, looking closely at how we use our faculty/staff to meet student needs, whether in small groups, or one on one, or “push in” to classrooms.  We also made changes to our middle school ELA program, specifically in sixth grade, going from one ELA class for students, to a reading class and a writing class, doubling instructional time at that level on reading and writing.  We also were able to begin to take assessment data and work on ways we can help teachers understand where their students are based on assessment reports.  Also, we are examining ways to share this information with families at parent/teacher conferences during the 2021-2022 school year.

Goal 4:  Core Curriculum and Instruction.  Within this goal we were able to implement at the elementary level strong fidelity to our reading and writing curriculum.  To also potentially implement more training on our phonics program, “Fundations”.  We also have worked on common assessments for writing at the 6-12 level, and at BHS we started the process for school-wide curriculum development and revision of the curriculum, which will be a three year process.  

Goal 5:  Professional Development/Coaching.  This year while so much was new, we were able to implement a lot of newly acquired instructional strategies, which was amazing.  We were able to continue to provide professional development based on individual teacher needs.  A great deal of time was invested in professional development related to “Data Literacy”, learning how to use data to inform instruction, which will continue.  We also, as I stated previously, will  be participating in a workshop for teachers spanning three days in June on “Differentiation” which will help teachers address the various needs of their students, and help to reinforce the workshop model for reading and writing that we are utilizing in several of the grades throughout the district.

This is just a quick update and review of the impact that the BPS Literacy Plan has had within the district during the past year.  As I stated, we were, surprisingly, able to implement many of the year 1 action steps, and year 2 action steps this past year.  We will continue to meet as a Literacy Committee every other month during the 2021-2022 school year, keeping our eyes on the action steps we’ve implemented, and those that we need to implement in the next few years.  As always, thank you to the Bedford families, students and faculty/staff for their continued support and work.

Sincerely

Tricia Clifford, Ed. D.

Assistant Superintendent

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Superintendent’s Blog

Bedford Public Schools

Data Wise

As we all know, teachers have always used data.  Whether it’s a test, quiz, writing assessment, project or asking students questions to check for understanding, using data has always been an important part of teaching and learning.  By using various forms of data, teachers can get a better understanding if they need to re-teach a concept, present it in a different way, or if our students can move on to a more complex concept, or new material.  

Within the realm of data and its use in informing instruction, a lot has been researched, and learned over the past few years.  The work by Boudette, City and Murnane in their book, Data Wise:  A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning (2013), from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is in many ways a very clear outline as to how and why schools should use data to inform our instruction.  In September of 2019 here in Bedford, as a K-12 curriculum leadership team (program administrators, program directors, principals, central office administrators, and curriculum coordinators) we began the work of diving into the “Data Wise” process.  

The first part of our process was to look closely at our District-Wide Strategic Objects, which outline several objectives all of which connect closely to the Data Wise work, but the one we focused on most in relation to this work was :

“Collaborative Professional Culture:  Nurture a professional culture that maximizes administrator and teaching learning, innovative and creativity by creating authentic opportunities for collaborative work that is informed by shared goal-setting, and analysis of student work and achievement data.”

The Data Wise process itself presents a clear and carefully tested blueprint for school leaders.  It shows how examining text scores and other classroom data (other classroom data is equally as important as standardized tests, if not more important) can become a catalyst for important schoolwide conversations that will enhance schools’ abilities to capture teachers’ knowledge, foster collaboration, identify obstacles to change, and enhance school culture and climate.

As a K-12 curriculum leadership team, we focused on improving teaching and learning by using data structures to discuss, and create meaningful assessments, to form teams to gather the data, analyze the data and inform our teaching, and continue to do this as an ongoing process.  During our work as a K-12 curriculum leadership team we focused on preparing for this work in September 2019, which included reading the first chapters of Data Wise, and continued in November with learning about how to look at data and inquiring within our schools.  In February we began to dig into ways we could act and create data structures to help inform instruction, and in April we began to set up the structure that we would implement during the 2020-21 school year.  Finishing up the year, having read, discussed and implemented, Data Wise:  A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning (2013).

We were fortunate in many ways in regard to timing. As we began this process of learning about systemic ways to use data within the K-12 landscape in Bedford to inform our instruction, we had no idea how important it would be to have these structures in place.  When the pandemic occurred in March of 2020, we pivoted to remote learning, and then in the fall of 2020 began our hybrid and all remote models.  I can’t say how appreciative and impressed I have been with the implementation of the data work during the school year.  It was vital that we have a data system in place during the past year.  

In September and October we were able to take baseline data in literacy and math, to find out where students were within their learning and understanding of grade level standards, K-12.  In the fall after those assessments were completed we met at grade levels throughout the district to analyze the student data and create plans to adjust our curriculum and instruction, and to provide Rti (Response to Intervention) support to students.  During January and February, we as a system, again utilized student assessments to capture students’ understanding and learning during the several months they were in school.  We continued the process of analysis and intervention.  This spring we will do this again, and I believe, will be able to see that with the use of the Data Wise system, we have been able to adjust our teaching to help students make progress that is meaningful and will help them bridge what has been a difficult year, to September 2021.  

Without the ability to utilize a K-12 data system to capture what students know and are able to do, in relation to their learning, it would have been difficult this school year to understand how much learning might have been lost during the pandemic, how we could adjust our teaching to address learning gaps, or loss during the 2020-21 school year, and where we need to focus coming into the fall of 2021.  Again, I want to thank the faculty and staff in Bedford, for their dedication to making this system be meaningful for our students, and also I want to thank the students for persevering and doing their best.  We will continue to utilize the Data Wise system as we move forward in the coming years.  The goal over time is to learn from students how our teaching can be improved to meet their needs, and help them reach their fullest potential.

Tricia Clifford, Ed. D.

Assistant Superintendent